SURVIVAL
The Maasai have lost so much of their land to Dubai hunting-game firm Ortello Business Corporation (OBC), they cannot afford to lose any more. PHOTO/© Survival
The Tanzanian government this week announced a new ‘conservation’ area on Maasai lands, which community leader Samwel Nangiria says will spell ‘the end of the Maasai and the Serengeti ecosystem’.
The Maasai have been bitterly opposed to the grabbing of their village lands in Loliondo division by the government and have sworn to fight to keep their land.
The dramatic landscape of the Serengeti is world famous as a safari holiday destination. To the Maasai, however, this land is home, and they have already been removed from much of their lands in the name of conservation.
Although the government claims that the land is needed as a corridor for wildlife to move between the Serengeti National Park and the Maasai Mara National Park in Kenya, the area was leased to a safari hunting company, the Ortello Business Corporation (OBC) in 1992. The Maasai and their animals are being told to leave in the interests of conservation, while wealthy tourists are allowed to hunt the ‘big game’ that roams the area.
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